From AI Anxiety to AI Advantage

AI consultant and commercial growth leader Amie Rafter says the veterinary sales reps who learn to harness AI will be better prepared, more productive and more marketable.

Artificial intelligence may be changing the way veterinary sales reps work, but that does not necessarily mean it is coming for their jobs.

Instead, AI is increasingly becoming a tool for taking some of the work out of sales, from account research and meeting preparation to territory analysis, follow-up and administrative reporting. The payoff? Less time spent on tasks and more time spent selling, coaching and building customer relationships.

“In the next year, sales reps’ roles are not likely to be eliminated entirely,” said Amie Rafter, commercial growth leader, AI consultant and founder of Hbird Consulting. In her view, the more immediate opportunity is not wholesale job replacement or even a fundamental transformation of the sales role. It is using AI to make sales professionals more effective.

“Bottom line is it provides better information and reduces admin time,” Rafter said. And while individual reps can benefit from AI tools, she believes the biggest gains will come when organizations move beyond one-off experimentation and develop AI-enabled tools and processes that can be shared across the sales team.

In the following interview with Vet-Advantage, Rafter discussed how AI is reshaping the veterinary sales role, where reps can find the biggest opportunities to use the technology, and why the greatest gains may come when sales organizations embrace AI as a team rather than as a collection of individual tools.

There is a lot of discussion about AI replacing jobs. For veterinary sales professionals, what is the more realistic impact: job displacement, role transformation or something else?

Amie Rafter: When we hear job displacement in the media, it can feel concerning and anxiety producing, especially if you don’t feel you have mastered AI in your role or are unsure of your company’s strategy. Now, I cannot predict the future, but I can say in the next year sales reps’ roles are not likely to be eliminated entirely. Long term the landscape could change as market and buying dynamics can always shift, but in my work with companies, I would say that’s a ways away.

You mention role transformation, and I think even that is still up for grabs. Right now, sales teams that are embracing AI well are those that have harnessed it for account research, meeting preparation, follow-up emails, territory analysis, administrative reporting and even identifying patterns across customer data. Bottom line is it provides better information and reduces admin time, allowing more time for sales managers to coach and upskill their teams and field reps to sell, which offers big ROI. Full role transformation in my definition is when your responsibilities and day to day is foundationally different, and I don’t think we are there yet.

Over time I think the organizations that can build organizational tools at a team or national level that impact everyone vs. individual contributors are going to see the biggest gains. We see what magic happens in our sales enablement trainings when we pair up participants to develop tools and methods that are shared and refined by the team and then turned in to standard tools supported by leadership, IT and other cross-functional teams. This is where the ROI is compounded.

Why should a veterinary sales representative view AI adoption as a career development issue ratherthan simply a technology trend?

Rafter: As someone who spent most of their career in sales, I understand better than most that good sales reps care primarily about execution and supporting their customers. The last thing they want is more tech to learn and computer work. That said, AI is not just software where you are doing data entry or working in a spreadsheet. It’s a dynamic assistant that changes how work gets done. And those that learn how to use it will be more promotable and marketable in their careers moving forward.

The truth is some companies are even raising quotas considering the perceived increase in sales they think can be achieved with AI’s support. If you aren’t using AI, you may be left behind by those that are able to do more with less.

I think the biggest challenge right now is that reps are not being given access to the tools with proper training on how to make them applicable for their role. This is a leadership issue, and I encourage reps to ask their organizations’ policies and strategy on AI and how they can get more training.

AI is not going anywhere, and I think the key is to get competent enough to know what it’s good at and what it’s not, and what makes you essential for your role.

I would encourage representatives to think beyond, “How can AI help me do my current job faster?” The stronger question is, “How can AI help me become more strategic and prepare for the next version of my role?”

Historically, great sales reps differentiated themselves through product knowledge and relationships. How does AI change what it means to be a high-performing rep?

Rafter: We cannot forget that at the end of the day, buying decisions are still made by humans. Relationships matter, being able to build trust and deliver outcomes matters. In my opinion AI doesn’t change that, especially in complex sales environments like veterinary sales.

What needs to be understood, however, is that AI is not just being used by sales; it’s being used by customers. They can use AI to compare products, review clinical information, explore alternatives, run competitive analysis and prepare questions before a representative ever walks through the door. A representative cannot rely on being the primary source of information in the same way they may have in the past.

This is a great thing in the long run because many companies have felt the pain of losing a top performer and the knowledge and relationships they have. Thanks to AI, you can have better data on buying signals and pricing strategy recorded and not lose intellectual capital when turnover happens.

AI also levels the playing field, meaning that instead of just relationships or clinical knowledge which took years to acquire moving the needle, now the high-performing representative will differentiate through context. They will understand the customer’s business, recognize relevant patterns, ask stronger questions, and connect products and services to the practice’s specific priorities. This is achievable without as much tenure, as its more about competency and ability to harness what AI can give them.

We must remember at the same time that AI can help representatives arrive better prepared, but the representative still has to know what matters. They need to distinguish a useful insight from an irrelevant data point. They need to know when to challenge an assumption, when to listen and when a customer’s stated problem may not be the real problem.

The best representatives will combine three strengths: human trust, commercial judgment and AI-supported insight. AI raises the baseline for preparation. Human capability determines what happens next.

Can AI help a rep identify opportunities they may not see — such as changes in buying patterns, practice growth signals or emerging customer needs?

Rafter: If I asked AI this question, it would give a confident yes. But it’s not that simple. The truth is absolutely you can analyze order patterns over time, do comprehensive account research and analyze notes and conversations to provide opportunities and insights. What you need in order to do that well is good data sources, and this is not always available or discernible at the rep level.

When I work with sales organizations, it’s essential I talk about the data layer. In the last question we mentioned how in the past high performing reps were holding relationship and intellectual capital that could not be easily replicated. One reason is it generally hasn’t been well documented. So, if those phone and text conversations or live meetings are not recorded, if your order data is flowing through different account numbers and your tracking is inaccurate, if you are operating off spreadsheets that track orders but not complaints, returns or backorders, your results will be limited or inaccurate.

The good news is that even using AI to gather research, market trends, and competitive intel along with directionally accurate order history or account intel will enhance any reps ability to interact more effectively with their account and ask intelligent questions to clarify.

Again, proper training to learn how to avoid misinformation, and to verify data and outputs is essential and important for organizations to offer and manage through governance and policy. Often organizations need to invest in data cleanup project to allow AI to work with it effectively.

Bottom line, AI is a great assistant, and being well versed how to set up and prompt your AI can lead to better results, but at the end of the day, it should not make decisions for the representative. A pattern is a signal, not a conclusion. The representative still needs to validate what is happening and understand the context. This is also another reason they are still essential to their roles, and AI is not likely to displace them anytime soon.

How can reps use AI to strengthen their personal brand — whether through LinkedIn, industry content or thought leadership?

Rafter: In my talks on AI and Career, I always say visibility is a career strategy. Strengthening your personal brand generally depends on the career goals you have, whether it’s to strengthen your success in your current role, get promoted or pivot to something new.

AI can make it easier for representatives to share what they know, but the goal should not be to produce more generic content. The goal should be to make their real expertise more visible and aligned with the goal you are trying to achieve.

At a baseline, regardless of your career goal, have AI help you refine your Linked in profile and have a professional picture, banner and about section. AI can support with creating a description that is aligned with the area or skills you most want to promote. LinkedIn is the first-place recruiters or hiring managers are looking when you apply for a job, so it’s worth keeping yourself looking professional and up to date.

When it comes to posting, a representative can use AI to turn field observations, customer questions, meeting notes, conference takeaways, or industry trends into useful LinkedIn posts, short articles, videos or customer education content. AI can help organize the ideas, improve the structure and adapt the message for different audiences. Always make sure you are not violating your company’s policies on what can be shared.

The important part is that the insight still needs to come from the person. The strongest thought leadership is grounded in lived experience: what customers are asking, what practices are struggling with, what changes are occurring in the market, and what the representative has learned from being close to the work.

The biggest thing to watch is having AI write generic content that is not authentic or in your voice. Again, your audience is human, and they will dismiss AI content that feels written by a bot.

A strong personal brand is built by being useful, credible and recognizable over time. AI can reduce the effort required to share your expertise, but it cannot manufacture expertise or trust.

If you are looking for a job, it’s also important to know that AI can help you match your resume to the job description and include key words that will be picked up by application tracking systems already in place that are AI based and designed to screen out candidates before a recruiter sees them.

One other great way to use AI personally is to have it provide daily or weekly custom industry briefs to keep you up to date on the latest in your industry, giving you credibility and keeping you up to speed on trends, companies and market movement ahead of your competition.

What do you think the “AI-enabled veterinary sales rep” looks like five years from now? What are they doing differently than today’s rep?

Rafter: This is a great question and with the evolution of these tools it could go many ways.

The trend in AI is toward autonomous agents and coworkers that do tasks for you. This could look like each rep having a personal assistant that each morning gives them the latest alerts on numbers, industry and customer intel, mapping their routes, scheduling their meetings and capturing follow-up notes it then tracks and sets reminders from. This leaves the rep to go out and engage their customers with the latest relevant information and to go after the most time aligned opportunities shortening sales cycles, and waste.

Middle management may be engaging directly with these agents to orchestrate their reps coaching, performance management and automate onboarding and real-time training in the field with most communications through mobile devices using voice instead of typing.

The AI-enabled veterinary sales representative will be strategic and able to get quick approvals or complex decisions or cases, and the strongest will likely be more involved with company strategy as field intel will be incorporated in more custom ways. They will be able to bring structured customer intelligence back into the organization, identify emerging needs, and help marketing, product, and leadership teams respond more effectively.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but what advice I can give is that AI is shifting us away from focusing on a title and thinking more about what shift change our roles create. A veterinary sales representative’s job is to drive revenue for their organizations. They will need to hold that outcome at the forefront as these tools take over many of the tasks they have manually done in the past. Don’t be afraid of change and learning something that can help you not just do your existing job better, but have overall impact to the company’s mission and vision and goals. Stay curious and interested, encourage your leadership to invest in training and see what you can do.

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